Sharp's Travels

Our day began about 9:30am when we hopped on the motorcycle and headed for Portland.
Our first stop was the Portland Observatory. It is the only remaining historic maritime signal station in the U.S.
We got a guided tour up the 103 steps to the top. It is 83 feet high, which allowed the incoming ships to be identified from 30 miles away. The merchants were charged for the service of signaling the arrival of their vessels with the systems of colored flags, giving them enough time to have a crew ready at the wharf to meet and unload the shops. You got a magnificent view of Portland and Casco Bay.
Our next stop was the Shipyard Brewing Co., Maine’s premier microbrewery located in Portland’s historic waterfront. We were shown a short film on how the beer is made and where the ingredients come from before being taken to a large room where the beer is bottled, labeled, and boxed for shipment. Shipyard Beer is well known and liked all down the east coast as well as in California. Of course at the end of the tour we were taken to the tasting room where we were given 5 different beers to taste. I didn’t like any of them. Gay liked 3 out of 5. He finished up all my samples.
It was getting on towards lunch time so we tried the Flatbread Co, the all natural pizza baked in a primitive, wood fired Earthen Oven. You can watch them toss the dough into the air and put it on the flat irons and place it in the big open fire oven. It didn’t take long for it to cook and we thought it was really good.
We did a little shopping but didn’t find anything worth bringing home.
We went down by the waterfront looking for Spring Point Ledge Lighthouse and ended up at the Bug Light. They are similar in style and we didn’t realize we’d gone to the wrong one until we got home. We couldn’t see what people were talking about when they referred to the granite breakwater between the shore and the lighthouse. Oh well, next visit maybe we will take that in!

One last stop for the day was the Two Fat Cats Bakery. The sweets there are all made from scratch. When we walked in we could smell the fresh peach pies that just came out of the oven. We choose a Whoopie Pie. It tasted just like the ones my Mom used to make.
On our way home we stopped in Sabattus for homemade ice cream. That’s supper. We had another big day.
Gay has uploaded pictures of the day see album Old Town Portland